Using smart phones together with smart vehicles, short range wireless protocols may enable remote performance of various vehicle tasks. For example, using his or her smart phone, a vehicle driver may unlock his/her vehicle door from the office, from within a shopping mall or from another relatively distant location. Similarly, the same smart phone may command the vehicle to be remotely started. Such approaches use software installed on the smart phone that connects with backend telematics services and provides message data to the backend indicating the driver's desired task. In response to receiving this message data, the backend sends a control signal to the vehicle over a cellular communication network to perform the task.